Strict Penalties in Aceh

Young girls attend a class where they learn to read and memorize from the Koran in Banda Aceh, Aceh province of Indonesia. (Voja Miladinovic/Getty Images)

By Sadanand Dhume

Originally published in the Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2009

From the Indonesian province of Aceh-epicenter of the devastating
Indian Ocean tsunami five years ago that killed 230,000 people-comes
fresh evidence that in the Muslim world, the most common disasters tend
to be man-made. On Monday, the provincial parliament stiffened its
interpretation of Shariah law by introducing the classical Islamic
penalty of stoning to death for adultery. Premarital sex and
homosexuality drew a lighter rebuke; for them, the pious lawmakers
recommend 100 strokes of a rattan cane.

The news from Aceh, the recipient of
billions of dollars in international aid, challenges two widely held
beliefs: First, that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim
country, is somehow immune to the blend of puritanical piety and
Islamist politics that over the past 35-odd years has disfigured Muslim
communities from Morocco to Mindanao. Second, that moderate
Muslims-those who interpret their faith in personal rather than
political terms-have the will and the intellectual firepower to beat
back a well-organized and motivated Islamist minority.

Even in a country that's 88% Muslim, Aceh, known as "Mecca's verandah" for its historic role as a staging point for hajj
pilgrims, stands out. Politically, the area was an independent kingdom
for much of its history and today enjoys an unusual degree of autonomy
from Jakarta. Religiously it's distinct, too. In the 17th century, the
then independent sultanate came under the sway of Nuruddin ar-Raniri, a
zealous scholar and book burner from India, who gave the local brand of
Islam a dour cast. In the 1950s, Aceh was a center of the Darul Islam
rebellion against the central government. From the mid-1970s onward the
Free Aceh Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym GAM, blended
economic grievances with a sense of separateness based partly on a
deeper connection to Islam and lead an insurgency against Jakarta.

Since 1999, the Indonesian government
has attempted to blunt pro-independence sentiment by allowing the
Acehnese to implement Shariah law. But it was only with the signing of
a peace agreement between GAM rebels and Jakarta four years ago that
Acehnese Islamism came into its own. Antivice squads began rounding up
bareheaded women and unmarried sweethearts. Clerics mandated public
flogging for sipping a beer or failing to down a shop's shutters for
Ramadan prayers. Would-be canoodlers quickly found the province's
once-popular beaches off limits. Stoning adulterers is only the next
logical step.

Those who believe that the rest of
Indonesia cannot go the way of Aceh tend to highlight the historical
and cultural differences between the Acehnese and the country's
dominant linguistic group, the 90-million strong Javanese. Indonesia is
shielded by a 1,000-year Hindu-Buddhist past, a nonsectarian
constitution and a largely moderate population. But Aceh, for all the
distinctiveness of its past, also mirrors a broad nationwide shift
toward orthodox piety and acceptance of the medieval norms enshrined in
Shariah.

Across the archipelago local
governments have begun to mandate dress codes for women. In some parts
of the country citizens can't obtain a marriage license or admission to
a state school without proving that they can read the Koran. Last year,
the Muslim Brotherhood knock-off, the Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS,
spearheaded a Shariah-inspired "antipornography" bill that encourages
vigilantism and criminalizes aspects of non-Muslim cultures. Mobs have
attacked mosques belonging to the "heretical" Ahmadiyya Muslim
community and "illegal" house churches.

To be sure, the Islamist effort has
not gone unopposed. Groups such as the Liberal Islamic Network, the
path-breaking Libforall Foundation helmed by former president
Abdurrahman Wahid, and assorted women's groups have pushed back. Yet
while their efforts are worth lauding, they also suffer from a fatal
flaw. Extremists and moderates are free to quibble over the
interpretation of Koranic verses and the life of the prophet Muhammad,
but any public criticism of Islam itself is out of bounds.

The Spaniard who supports
contraception and gay rights can flatly declare that he doesn't care
what the Bible says or what the Pope thinks. An Indonesian who says the
same about the Koran and the prophet Muhammad invites charges of
"Islamophobia" and threats of violence. Until this changes and
Indonesian secularists begin to enjoy the same freedom to criticize
religion as their counterparts in the United States, India or South
Korea, they will continue to fight with one hand tied behind their back.

Because of the province's unique
history, Indonesia watchers often dismiss Aceh as peripheral to the
larger debate about the country's struggle with Islamism. The opposite
is true. Aceh's swift descent toward barbarism is proof that making
concessions to Islamists whets rather than sates their appetite. More
broadly, the difficulty Acehnese face in speaking out against laws made
in the name of Islam underscores the challenge of defending human
rights against a backdrop of rising piety.

Unless Indonesians can learn to
criticize faith in purely secular terms-to treat allegedly divine
revelation and its clerical interpreters with skepticism rather than
automatic deference-they may soon discover that their westernmost
province is merely a few steps ahead of the rest of the country along
the same slippery slope toward Shariah.

Sadanand Dhume is an Asia Society Fellow and the
author of “My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist”
(Skyhorse Publishing, 2009).

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